Former Minister of Information and Publicity, Professor Jonathan Moyo has downplayed Nelson Chamisa’s recently launched Pre-election Pact on Electoral Reforms (PREPARE) document as vague and disconcerting.
Chamisa is making demands for the credibility of the voters roll, real-time and credible results management and transmission system, integrity of the election process, political freedoms and media access, security of both the vote and voter and guarantee of the right to vote.
Posting on Twitter, Professor Moyo said the electoral reform demands had huge flaws that exposed Chamisa’s Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC).
“The release of #CCC‘s “7 electoral reform demands” has exposed the telling fact that the party and its loquacious trolls don’t know that election results in Zim are announced, in real time at polling stations, immediately after vote counting. This is huge for vote defence! Real time result announcement is done in terms of s64(d) of the Electoral Act which mandates the presiding officer to: “Display (announce) the polling station return (V11) to those present”. The display is before publication of the result outside of the polling station.
“To sum up, results of local authority, parliamentary and presidential elections are by law announce/display in real-time at all polling stations. Declaration of poll results is done at ward, constituency, provincial command and national command centres; not in real-time! It’s not true that there’s no real-time announcement of election results in Zim’s election system, there is; it’s done at polling stations. But political parties cannot competently cope with or challenge the system, without competent polling agents at all polling stations,” posted Moyo
He added “Clearly, @nelsonchamisa‘s claim that #CCC‘s electoral reform demands came “after extensive consultations with citizens” exposes the pitfall of #CCC‘s lack of structures. No political party anywhere can do “extensive consultations with citizens”, without structures. Never! #CCC‘s claim that it based its ‘7 electoral reform demands’ on the Motlanthe Commission Report is disingenuous: the demands exclude key recommendations of Motlanthe Commission, including: “the need for the registration of political parties to ensure their accountability”!
“Penultimately, and in light of #CCC‘s now predictable vituperatives, the sooner the fledgling party and its trolls understand that they are just one political party; which is neither a coalition nor a convergence of citizens nor the generality of Zimbabweans, the better! Given the foregoing, it must be said that @nelsonchamisa‘s “7 electoral reform demands”, coming within 10 months before the 2023 general election, are four and a half years too little too late; they’re cynical and opportunistic; but even worse, they’re vague and embarrassing!”
